correa at rang sharda

the other day we were all at rang sharda auditorium in bandra where he was being felicitated for being awarded the padma vibhushan as it was the forum where prajna was finally being given her gold medal. she, prasad, prasad, rupali, saurabh, namrata, aditya, benita, kalpit, mayuri, neha, nikita, and more from the krvia contingent sat in the audience. the event was organized by the iia and sponsored by companies selling pipes who insisted on a presentation of their work as the finale of the event. it was embarrassing this complete submission to the market by the architectural community. since we have sources in correas office nowadays we knew that charles was extremely pissed at having his lecture being upstaged by marketing nerds.

i live in a charles correa building. lic colony is a series of string like buildings laid in rows on a hill. my house is on the first floor with a terrace facing a slope on which gulmohar and other trees grow wild. my mother and father cant stop appreciating correas tenet for good architecture in india - ‘the blessings of the sky’. it’s a kind of living in the city that has been part of me all my life- where the line between inside and outside is blurred constantly. i remember there used to be pathways that climbed the hills connecting the various levels where we could walk through. as days have gone by each building has become more and more security conscious and has made high compound walls around them breaking these connections. many people have gone about enclosing the terraces because the space inside the house is too tiny- and in many cases it actually is. anyways, to cut a long story short – correas very particular approach to space has been an integral part of the way i see architecture- consciously and sub-consciously.

at his lecture at the event he scanned through some of his early work (the elegant gandhi museum in ahmedabad, kanchanjunga- my favorite high rise anywhere in the world) before showing us his recent building in the mit campus and the mill lands work. i liked the mit building tremendously. its bulky and rather unwieldy- but was able to adjust itself to a complex program and site very easily. the mill lands work was (as it has been proved recently with the recent ruling) almost impossibly romantic. in his lecture he admitted to its defeat, but insisted that it was important to continue the process of imagining alternatives of resistance. this naïve idealism and belief in the power of architectural thought reminded me of the way in which we used to look at architecture when i was in school- before the cynicism took over. this wide eyed belief, i think, is sometimes necessary. kalpit spoke to aditya, saurabh and me about how it was affecting him. it was great to see that kind of utopianism exist and inspire him.

after the lecture at the free dinner and drinks we saw all of the architects present obsequiously adore him with flowers and rush madly to the free drinks counter.